


Paint a happy face on, clown

by HaroThar



Series: Gamzeeweek2019 [1]
Category: Homestuck
Genre: Alien Mythology/Religion, Anthropomorphic, Clown Religion, Eating Disorders, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Naga, Recovery, Self-Harm, almost freezing to death
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-21
Updated: 2019-05-21
Packaged: 2020-03-09 03:27:30
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 5
Words: 4,442
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18908596
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/HaroThar/pseuds/HaroThar
Summary: My shorter works from Gamzeeweek 2019, featuring some clowny religious nonsense, recovery from a lifetime of bullshit, some anthro tomfoolery, and some nice old fashioned Gamzee whump and comfort





	1. Church

“Holy sister,” Gamzee whispered, bent upon his knees with curls hung around his face, “I greet you at this verdant altar. I bring to you my offerings of mirth, that which shall cause joy to the laughing face. I have brought laughter to the bellies of my brethren, shared in the levity of those alongside me. To the audience I have brought smiles and protection I have given to they that I deem do motherfucking deserve. For these deeds, I kick this wicked elixir at your feet.”

Gamzee knocked back the jeweled chalice of slightly-cool cheap soda and sneezed as the bubbles made their way down. He sniffed, and continued. 

“My askances for you are simple things, my holy sister. I ask for the continuation of your holy church, and the balance of you and your sibling be maintained. I ask that you keep for me the providence of all these things I need and that you do deliver. I ask,” Gamzee’s cheeks heated, this one more personal, “I um. I ask for the success of my relationships with those two brothers I often tell you on, and whose laughter I often make offering to you. Perhaps, um, help me win their heart and diamond, so shall if you desire.”

Gamzee lifted his three clubs and stood, raising his eyes to the stain glass of the laughing mask and whorls of plants and song notes and levity, the muse of all music and magic. He juggled his clubs with precision.

“So I pray to the holy,” he tossed one club, “the joyous,” he tossed the second, “the kind.” He tossed the third. 

He successfully caught all three, and left to the next altar. Bathed red in the blood of animals not-troll, and rainbow in the sacrifices made of their own, Gamzee liked this altar less than the plot of dirt that grew flowers and herbs all sweep round. But even so, he knelt.

“Holy brother,” Gamzee whispered, bent upon his knees with curls hung around his face, “I greet you at this bloodstained altar. I bring to you my offerings of mirth, that which shall give a target mockery for the fang-bared face. I have clubbed the head of an unfunny motherfucker and turned her blood to paint,” it was a deed that sat poorly in Gamzee’s stomach, but a deed his god would revel in, he knew, “I have played pranks upon my friends and taken my place as the butt of others’ jokes. For these deeds, I kick this wicked elixir at your feet.”

Gamzee knocked back the wrought-metal goblet and sneezed again. Soda wasn’t meant to be drunk that fast, man. 

“My askances for you are few, my holy brother. I ask only for your strength, so that I may do the deeds of my desires without needing rely on the circumstances outside mine own control.”

He lifted his three clubs and stood, lifting his eyes to the blood-painted wall of the frowning mask and hard lines of weapons and fangs and schadenfreude, the lord of all domination. He juggled his clubs swiftly.

“So I pray to the holy,” he tossed one club, “the derisive,” he tossed the second, “the cruel.” He tossed the third. 

He caught them all and spun on one heel, leaving the area swiftly. He knew his red god was aware that Gamzee favored the sister green, and worried none over it. There were plenty that played their favorites, a solid third of all Gamzee’s holy siblings favoring the red god. Gamzee passed one such motherfucker on the way out, the sibling’s hands coated yellow and face grinning. Gamzee shuddered, and moved to the greenhouse.

It was his favorite place in the church. Around him, siblings meditated or tended to the sister’s plants, and Gamzee laid in a patch of moonlight and closed his eyes. Prayers said, he let himself drift, surrounded by this holy place, among his holy family, part of a religion that kept him.

 _“Sing soft the sweet sister who saves us,”_ Gamzee sung softly, an answering hum from a sibling nearby harmonizing with him. _“Sing sweet the strong sister of mirth.”_


	2. Control

The internet was full of smart motherfuckers, and had tools as Gamzee could use to learn things his lusus hadn’t taught and hadn’t made him attend schoolfeeds of. Apparently doing bad shit to your body by what you put in it (or what you didn’t) was a way for folks to control aspects of their lives when they felt they had no other. Gamzee figured that was right.

But then that turned into diseases and addictions, and the control was taken from the person and given to the disease and addiction instead. Gamzee figured that was right, also. He’d done it often enough. Put slime in his mouth when he was supposed to put food, and failed to put food because if it was his choice to eat or not, then he couldn’t feel so helpless when there was nothing around to eat.

But he wanted that control of his own back. So he went to the store and put everything in that squeaky-ass metal cart that he did like to look upon, and some ingredients that looked odd or unappetizing but boasted health on their packaging and Gamzee figured he’d find some miracle to add them to that would make them taste less bad. He borrowed cookbooks and looked up recipes online, having to return to the store many more times for unpurchased ingredients, but he did get to learning himself how to cook. How to bake. How to stir and knead and fry.

It was good. He felt better, like this. Food in his fridge and in his belly, for all that sometimes he still didn’t want to eat, just to prove it was his choice not to do so. Sometimes he didn’t. But he wanted the control over his own self, didn’t want his sick-addled pan to hold it over him, so he pushed and he made progress.

His pan pushed him for pies and baked nitrate and the sharp smell of slime. He pushed back at it, saying no, no, I can find my happiness on my own now. No, I don’t want to go all hazy and forget all as is said and done to me. No, I want to remember this, now. Now that there is something worth remembering. And so Gamzee fought with his pan, and sometimes lost, but he fought anyway, taking to his paints when the hunger curled over his tongue too motherfucking badly to ignore.

He rather liked seeing how he was improving. 

Every time he got that itch for a pie, he would paint, or sketch, and it was his own motherfucking choice, his own motherfucking hands. He got better, better control over his brush, better hold on the shapes and forms and shades of things. He liked it. Liked the change he did bring to himself, by his own decision and deed.

Got hard to find paints, sometimes, in all the mess his hive was in. It made it harder, to paint in a place like this, to live in a place like this. So. That was in his control. He could do something about that.

Not all at once, but he could.

So he started with his clothes, cause his clothes seemed like as good a place as any to start, and weren’t so daunting as his room of paints and papers. Went through and turned all them with holes or too small for his body as had grown up into rags. Made to keep only that which he did wear, and kept the others as way to clean hive and wipe paint and make use in new ways, not given, not forgotten, not lost or trashed, just new. Still his, because Gamzee weren’t never good at letting go. Next he got his culinary block into marching fuckin order, tossing that which had broken and would not fix. Opened his windows and smelled the sea, less threatening now, and less lonely too. He weren’t waiting for nothing out there on that sand that weren’t moonlight and brine. 

Bought himself more garbage cans and placed them in every motherfuckin block. Oftentimes more than one in a block. Anywhere he’d need reach of them, he placed them, and made mind to use them. Emptying them became a chore and then a game, and it was nice to keep a hive not stewing in his own filth.

Eating, sober, in a clean hive with a passion and hobby, things were better. Better than they ever had been. So he made like to learn. Dug up his old schoolfeeds that he never did finish even half their way and sat himself down to do them. He did the practice and he did the hivework and he educated his own motherfucking self how his lusus never had taught him how to, and though the knowledge wasn’t solid in his palms or belly, he held it close to him all the same.

He’d worked hard for this.

He’d earned it.

He’d taken control back over his own life.


	3. Unexpected Friendships (1/2)

Being small nimble and soft could have its perks, Gamzee knew. But most of the time, he wished he was slightly more intimidating than he was.

Like, for instance, when a big cat was on his trail and very, very, so very likely to eat him just as soon as he got caught. He darted through the forest with his pulse in his ears and lungs raw inside his throat, getting whipped by twigs and bushes and not able to care for his blood in his fur and on his skin, just yet. Right then he just needed to survive. 

He was fast, and trying so hard to get away, so if he weren’t so terrified it might have struck him as unfair when the threat behind him became secondary to the large, muscular form that slammed into him from the side. Disoriented, he clawed against the dirt and thrashed beneath the thing pinning him, and caught sight of golden-bronze scales. He was going to die. He was going to die, swallowed whole.

“Oh—Sorry, sorry!” the serpent said, pulling back. Golden-bronze scales melted into dark brown skin; a heavyset torso with thick muscle and thick fat. His arms slid into a gradient of scales that ended in clawed fingers, and his neck had scatterings of scales as well. He had the biggest eyes Gamzee had ever seen. Slitted eyes, open wide, and sharp fangs poking out over vibrant lips. He looked worried. “Sorry, I, uh, thought you were a boar.”

Gamzee trembled. His brain wasn’t--wasn’t really acting right. This should. Gamzee should be dead? Maybe he was imagining this, like, in his death throes? Aside from his trembling he couldn’t move, petrified with fear.

“I, uh,” the serpent continued, rubbing at the back of his floppy, pretty hair. “I don’t eat, uh, people. Only full-animals,” he explained. Gamzee still couldn’t move.

The big cat caught up to him.

He stopped, when he caught sight of the serpent. Few things were scary enough to make apex predators stop, Gamzee certainly wasn’t one such thing, but another apex predator sure did give a motherfucker pause. The cat growled, low in his chest and claws kneading at the soft earth.

The serpent focused, pupils wide as to strike, with unwavering intensity on the newfound threat. Gamzee remained uselessly, suicidally still. He wasn’t sure if he could even breathe.

“That’s my prey,” the cat growled.

“That’s, too bad,” the serpent answered, each scale betraying his tenseness, ready to spring. The cat pawed back and forth, not wanting to get close to those fangs, those muscles, ready to encircle and constrict.

“Maybe I’ll eat you, instead,” the cat spat, angrily pacing along the border he’d set around the serpent.

“Maybe, uh, maybe you will,” the serpent said, not sounding scared at all.

The cat chuffed, then snarled, then pawed at the soft earth before stalking away. Few things were worth fighting a serpent over, it seemed. And Gamzee certainly wasn’t one.

The serpent turned back to Gamzee and a frightened sound caught halfway in his throat, stillborn in fear. The serpent smiled.

“It’s, okay. I’m not going to hurt you,” he said, empty palms held open in placation towards Gamzee. More reassurance than he’d been given in all the years of his life.

Gamzee’s trembling grew more pronounced, shaking like a leaf. Tears budded in his eyes, smearing the sight of the man who’d just spared and saved him.

“Oh, sorry,” the serpent said, and made as to pull away but Gamzee reached out, unsteady and shaking, and gently placed his hands upon the wrist and arm closest to him. Shaking, still mute in terror, he leaned close and hugged the muscled limb, curling into the cool skin and scale as his tears did start to fall. 

“Oh,” the man repeated, as Gamzee’s crying gave way to sobs, “Uh, gee. There there.” The free scaled hand made like to pet gentle in Gamzee’s hair, and he heard a soft gasp as he curled against the limb that he held trapped.

“You’re, uh, really soft,” the serpent said. “Chinchilla?”

Gamzee nodded, turning his head into the touch against it, arms still a vice around the other arm and not letting it go. The hand moved to one of Gamzee’s ears, cartoonish against a person’s face, and Gamzee felt the strange sensation of getting pet behind one such. He hoped he wouldn’t stop.

“I’m Tavros,” the serpent said. Gentle, soft, like rainwater down to the riverbed.

“G,” Gamzee hiccupped, “Gamzee,” he gasped out.

“Nice to meet you, Gamzee,” Tavros greeted, kind as any could sound, and Gamzee sobbed louder, pressing himself to the soft, cool skin of Tavros’s chest. Heavy arms wrapped around him and Gamzee felt, surprisingly, safe. He’d hardly known the sensation. It made him cry harder, as cool fingers carded through his hair and rubbed over the fur of his ears, arms, and the tuft of his tail. 

“You are, like, um. _Really_ soft,” Tavros said, and Gamzee laughed a little through his blubbering.

“Thanks, brother,” he said, voice all raw and warbly from crying. “You are, like, crazy motherfuckin’ miraculous with them hands of yours. Don’t stop?”

“I’m, very okay with that,” Tavros said, smiling at Gamzee before leaning forward and pressing his face into Gamzee’s hair. “Holy _shit.”_

Gamzee laughed again, louder, stronger. “My hair’s the softest,” he told him, feeling a faint, small chirp in the back of his throat.

“I noticed,” Tavros said, muffled by Gamzee’s fluff. Gamzee wiped at his eyes and his nose, settling more comfortably against the fat and scale and muscle of Tavros’s impressive bulk. 

“You really ain’t gonna eat me?” Gamzee asked, figuring that if anyone was going to eat him, he guess maybe he wouldn’t mind it terrible much if it was Tavros. A brother was being awful nice to him, nicer than anyone else, maybe nice enough to die for the privilege. 

“Uh, no, no, I--I told you, I only eat full animals. Eating people just feels… weird, for me.” Tavros pulled back and linked his hands at the small of Gamzee’s back, holding him on the “lap” a coil of tail could make.

“Then I will sing a motherfuckin’ hallelujah for that,” Gamzee said, staring at those big motherfuckin’ eyes. “I sure as hell ain’t gonna complain.”

Tavros laughed at his joke, then hunched his shoulders in the cutest motherfuckin’ manner, which weren’t fair on a brother his size.

“And you, uh, aren’t scared of me?”

Gamzee shook his head slow. “You did both spare my life and then defend it, brother. And then show me kindness unprecident. I’d no sooner fear you than the sweet motherfuckin’ zephyrs as coil over the leaves, brother.”

Tavros’s cheeks turned the prettiest shade of brown, and when Gamzee looked close he now noticed small, very tiny scale-freckles beneath Tavros’s gorgeous, captivating eyes. Wow.

“Then, uh, does that make us… friends?”

Gamzee grinned, hope on his fur and face as sure as it was on Tavros’s. “I’d like that, Tavros. I’d like that a lot.”

He’d never had a real friend before.


	4. Unexpected Friendships (2/2)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The actual prompt for the day had been "Panel redraw" but since I don't really draw much I just continued the previous day's story, since I AM a gamkar bitch down to my very bones

Gamzee popped another berry into his mouth, wondering if he should maybe feel a little weirder about watching his best bro and very active crush eat a non-person chinchilla. It wasn’t Gamzee himself, so, he really didn’t care, but something in the back of his pan sorta told him he _should_ care? Whatever. 

Gamzee slammed the rest of the berries into his mouth. Why eat them one by one when he could shove them in so full his mouth hardly had room for all of them and then awkwardly try to chew as his teeth couldn’t quite grind in the space they had left. That was the peak of being, Gamzee decided. Just being a fucking dumbass with too many berries in his mouth.

“You got some on your face,” Tavros said with a giggle, leaning in close, so fucking close Gamzee could feel his breath on his skin. He blushed. 

“Where?” he asked around the half-mouthful of berries he still had. Was it hot, all of a sudden? The sun must’ve come out from behind a cloud. It was really so much warmer than when Tavros had been further from him.

“Right here,” Tavros said, leaning in closer, and for a brief, glorious moment, Gamzee thought maybe Tavros was going to lick it off his face. But then the cool, familiar scales of his thumb came up and brushed at Gamzee’s cheek, and Gamzee squinted and leaned into the touch, tail twitching happily at the contact of his best motherfucking friend even as his heart squeezed in a half disappointment. Tavros pulled back and licked the pulp off his thumb, forked tongue so fucking long, and Gamzee swallowed hard. Then he started coughing, too many berries for a thirst as big as his.

“Oh, oh no, are you alright?” Tavros asked in worry, the mood (whatever it had been) utterly shattered. Gamzee nodded and tried to wave him off, still coughing, tears welling up in his eyes as his throat and lungs protested their mistreatment. 

Seemed a fitting time for another motherfucker to come tumbling in, when Gamzee’s eyes were red with coughing and his face was all a mess. Another person, big enough it had to be, all black and furred with two big white stripes.

Oh shit.

Gamzee hid behind Tavros, alarm senses crying out at him. That was a motherfuckin’ _skunk_ as sure as hell would eat him. Not with Tavros, though. A skunk might eat chinchilla, but a skunk would eaten by a snake. 

“Fuck,” the brother hissed, eyes wide upon Gamzee’s beefy brother. He backpedaled slow, dragging his right leg through the grass and dirt, tail up.

“Don’t spray,” Tavros said, hands up. “I’m not going to hurt you.”

The skunk breathed out hard, furred, thick arms shaking barely-visible from where Gamzee cowered. Gamzee guessed he was maybe a little worried about the smell, which was a cool new fear to experience, in the face of his age-old fear of getting eaten.

“And why the fuck exactly should I believe that?” the skunk asked.

“Um, because I only eat full-animals,” Tavros explained. “You can, uh, just, go, I won’t follow.”

“Brother, he’s hurt,” Gamzee pointed out, quiet, with his tail curled round his chest. The skunk’s eyes flicked to him, and Gamzee ducked behind Tavros more.

“Is that a fucking chinchilla?”

“Might be,” Gamzee answered, still close to his scaled brother and most-obscured from the skunk. “Depends on if you’re the sort that _does_ eat people.”

“Fucksake you’re not fucking lying to me,” the skunk muttered, sounding dazed. “You’re not going to eat me.” Then, louder, “The little fucker is right. I can’t really,” he gestured to his leg, “do much.”

“It looks broke,” Gamzee mentioned, still close behind Tavros.

“Yeah it fucking feels broken too. I’d be happy to leave your little… whatever I just interrupted, but I don’t know how to set bones so just. Ignore me, or, what the fuck ever, I don’t know.”

“I know how to set dislocated shoulders,” Gamzee mentioned, remembering the time he had to do it to his own self. 

“Because I’m sure that translates to a broken leg one hundred fucking percent.”

“Aren’t you worried about him eating you?”

“Yeah but you’re here, and he don’t look too terrifying when you’re here.”

“Fuck you! I know it’s because I’m a runt; you don’t have to pretend.”

“Oh, you _are_ motherfuckin’ small for a skunk, ain’t you?”

“Oh fucksake just fix my leg or leave me here to die.”

Gamzee looked to Tavros, who shrugged. He slithered towards the skunk, eyes on the tail, and Gamzee followed close, still not trusting fully. But Gamzee liked helping. So. He’d help. Just as long as he had Tavros there to keep him safe. 

He placed gentle, soft-furred fingers on the brother’s leg and nodded to himself, half-draped over Tavros’s tail in case sharp fangs did bite. He pushed all quicklike, not wanting draw it out, and the skunk hissed as the bone popped back in place.

“...Thanks,” he made mention when he could speak through the pain and relief.

“I’m Gamzee,” Gamzee said, because maybe there was a friend to be made here. 

“Karkat.”

“I’m Tavros!” Tavros said brightly, smiling. 

“You two are fucking weirdos,” Karkat said, looking between them. “What are you, boyfriends?”

Gamzee’s face went real hot, fur raising, and he kept his fucking mouth shut. He very deliberately did not look at Tavros, didn’t think he could. Karkat kept staring between them two and then laughed.

“Okay, okay, I get it. That’s kind of cute.”

Get what?? Was Gamzee’s crush unrequited, and Karkat was making fun? Did Tavros like him back and Karkat was making mockery that neither had gumption to tell the other? What did that mean???

“Thanks,” Karkat repeated again, looking away, “for fixing my leg, and also for not eating me. I appreciate it.”

“Not a problem,” Tavros said brightly. “Would you like to be our friend too?”

Karkat snorted, but looked almost… shy?

“Sure, why the fuck not?”

Gamzee grinned. Two. _Two_ whole friends.


	5. Comfort

_It’s cold._

You shouldn’t have pissed off them siblings as were willing to actually put up with you. Now look what you’ve done. You’ve been too greedy and ungrateful and they’ve left you out in the snow for you to die.

_It’s so motherfucking cold._

You were just so hungry. You didn’t think you were asking for as much as all that. But that’s your fault; always so motherfuckin’ needy ain’t you? Maybe it’s for the best, this way. Can’t bother people no more if you’re dead, right? Maybe you _should_ just lay down and die.

_The snow is soft._

_Even though it is so, so cold._

It sticks to your eyelashes and wets your shirt fast, your dismal body heat melting it just enough so you will be wet and truly motherfucking miserable when you die. Whatever. It’s what you deserve, you guess.

_Fuck, it’s so cold it hurts. But then it doesn’t, as the pain goes cold and numb._

You close your eyes.

—

You open your eyes. Which, to be entirely honest, you weren’t thinking you were ever gonna do again. There are bodies near you, on either side, and under you, too, and thick blankets piled on top of you so heavy they’re as to make it hard to breathe. You twist to your right and there is a little nub-horned brother, asleep, and when you move your limbs you feel that he is wearing tanktop and short-shorts only. A spiral horned chica to your left is wearing same, and shifts awake when you brush frond over her arm. She smiles at you, big and bright as moonlight.

“Hey, you’re up,” she says softly, and she places a palm on your face. “We were worried there for a while. Tavros found you out in the snow and we were surprised you weren’t already dead.”

“I’m surprised too,” you admit, just as quiet. You look at the brother beneath you and he is still asleep, even with your shifting all around on top of him, in a tanktop and shorts same as his friends, with big fucking horns as are sideways and make it impossible for him to lay on anything but his back.

“Sorry about the naked thing. Your clothes were soaked through and we needed to get our body heat in you as fast as possible.”

You turn back to the sister, and then realize the reason you are able to discern so easily that these people are wearing little is because you are wearing nothing. You purple at the cheeks and honk softly, and the chica giggles at you.

“I can go grab you some pants and a sweater,” she offers, sliding out from under the mound of blankets. She don’t even really let the heat escape, but your side is left wanting in her absence.

“Thank you,” you say, awestruck and grateful. “Thank you,” you repeat, because she _has_ to know, she has to _know._ That you appreciate this, that you are so full of gratitude, that you ain’t gonna be an ungrateful motherfucker, that you appreciate what has been done for you in all extremes. “Thank you, thank you, thank you.” You can’t make yourself stop, tears coming up unbidden to your eyes like the little crywriggler that you are but you are so motherfucking _grateful_ in this bitch. The brothers aside and beneath you stir, waking up also, and you choke on a sob. “Sorry,” you gasp out, “Thank you. I’m sorry, thank you so much, thank you, sorry.”

“Woah, uh, hey,” the gorgeous brother beneath you murmurs out, lifting his arms up around you, while the brother at your side sits up and makes eyes all concerned at you. You sob louder, brain misfiring at all this kindness that is being shown at you. 

“I think he’s having a hard time,” smiling sister croons, slipping back under the covers and taking residence at your side again. They have hands on you, all three of them, soft and kind and gentle as to soothe, and you sob into their collective embrace, rescued and allowed this weakness.

“It’s gonna be okay,” the nubby horned brother says roughly, though his hands are soft where they pet your hair and hold you. “Shoosh, you’re gonna be just fine.”


End file.
